Sincerely, A Not So Average Teenager

3/21/14

*akward silence* Hey there......

Hehe well anyways, this update will basically just be about my symphonic band feastival yesterday. I want to write down all the details of it because I will probably never go to a band festival again. 😭

Sorry if this is boring to you. :/

🎵 But first let me take a selfie! 🎵 Jk that song is annoying.

So! We were supposed to compete at Reginals at Six Flags California this year like they did last year (when I wasn't in symphonic band), but it was too close to state tests and we didn't have enough money. So we stayed in town for the school district festival. Ugh!!!!!

Well, we had to play six scales and three songs. The scales kind of sucked at first. We weren't used to the gigantic theater., plus the curtain that was covering a brick wall in the back was absorbing our sound. So we were really quiet and sounded really different.

After the scales, we played our three songs. The first one was good, but the tubas and bass guitars sounded the loudest out of the whole band. (I play tuba in symphonic band) Not good, especially since we played one or two notes per measure.

The second song was the worst. We started out good, but apparently we were rushing a TON somewhere in the middle. I could tell we were rushing a bit, but I didn't know it was that bad. I'm scared to hear what the judges said durring that part.

The third song was pretty good. We were still quieter than usual, which is not good for the third song because it's supposed to be "aggressive" and loud, as my band director says. But we did pretty good on my section's solos. Luckily we didn't rush when we changed tempos, like the second song.

After our songs, we had to do sight reading. The song they gave us was fairly easy. At least my part was. It sucked, but not surprising because sight reading is hard to do the first time playing a song. The drums were rushing a lot.

After that, we left to go get our pictures taken. Me and my section had to stand on the top bleacher type thing. Not cool. Especially since I was trying to hold a tuba, not fall, not kill anyone, and had my toes smashed in the stupid high heels the whole time. I think the pictures were good. I really hope my hair wasn't messed up. Lol

They made us take a formal picture then a silly one. I ended up buying both because I didn't know there was going to be two types, and my parents weren't there.

After that we went back on the busses to go back to my school. They were stupid school busses. On the bus to the preformance, the starage spaces were way too small to fit tubas in. On the second bus, the spaces were half an inch too small to fit the bell of the tuba in. Half an inch!! Ughhhh. So me and this other girl had to climb in the bus carrying tubas and squish them into the seats. Not fun. Not fun at all. Especially since we already had to get them on and off busses an hour before that and carry them up stairs.

Then, that was it, basically. The bus ride back to school was sad. I still feel bad. Not going to go into details.

So that was my festival! I made it sound horrible, which all the standing in high heels and dresses and carrying tubas part, was. But over all it was fun.

Oh ya! Our scores!

We got all overall superior ratings!! That's the highest you can get. From the three judges, two rated us a 1 and one rated us a 1+ !! A 1+ is a really really good rating. A 1 is right bellow a 1+.

And on sight reading we got a 1-.

So they were pretty good ratings! There was no 1st 2nd or 3rd place prizes like at Reginals for this festival. But when we see how all the other bands did, we can see what place we would have been in.

THE END.

Sorry that that was probably all really confusing if you don't know anything about band or festival. This is mainly a way for me to remember the major things from festival.

Thanks for reading! I'm really greatful my readers. 😁

Sincerely,

A Band Geek (jk)